The Communist constitution had a lot of freedoms. But the text didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what’s in the constitution if the Democrats take full control.
Posted on 4/11/2015 9:23:50 AM by Jacquerie
It’s a pity the Russians didn’t enforce the constitution they had. The Soviet Constitution shared more than a few similarities with the US constitution. The rights to property, private correspondence, freedom of religion & conscience, equality before the law, and the right to earn/keep earnings and to leave inheritances are there.
All considered, it wasn’t bad for peoples who had only known Mongol hordes and Czars for the past thousand years.
Despite these guarantees, the Soviet Union was a slave state from its inception. How could oppression have lived side-by-side recognized assurances of so many personal rights?
Slavery was certain because the Soviet system lacked institutions designed to secure liberty.
Similar to post-1913 American governance, the Soviet constitution set up internal contradictions. While it guaranteed certain rights and free will, the Soviet constitution purposely neglected to provide governing institutions to secure those rights.
At least history provided the Russians with an excuse.
History doesn’t leave Americans such an easy out. The self-inflicted wound of the 17th Amendment destroyed the Framers' careful structure of freedom. In 102 years we morphed from the freest nation on earth to one on the cusp of hard tyranny.
Oh, and the Soviet Union had elections too.